An employee was arrested after allegedly stealing pain medicine at an assisted living facility.
Wildwood police were called Sunday night to the Willows at Wildwood, located on Bellwether Lane in Oxford, after an employee looking for a cigarette lighter spotted a large number of Hydrocodone pills in the purse of a fellow employee, 29-year-old Emily Kristyn Shearer, of Weirsdale. The employee reported what she had seen to the charge nurse.
The charge nurse told police the pills were identical to ones taken from a patient two weeks earlier.
When an officer interviewed Shearer, she admitted she had taken a pouch containing the pills from her purse, put it in a trash bag and took it to the dumpster, according to an arrest report. She said she was “scared” when she saw that law enforcement had arrived at the facility.
The officer accompanied Shearer to the dumpster, where she retrieved the bag and the pouch.
“The suspect stated that her mother gave her the Hydrocodone pills and that the Oxycodone pills were hers but that she didn’t have the prescription bottle,” the officer wrote in the report.
Shearer said she had been taking the pills for “a couple a days because her shoulder, back and ankle hurt due to long work hours.”
Shearer was arrested on a felony charge of drug possession and booked at the Sumter County Detention Center. She was released after posting $2,000 bond.
